By Schubert Ogden
Page History
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Still, there is necessary, and there is necessary – and being part of a Christian church is necessary to a full and right relationship with this God only if – in a phrase of John Wesley's – there be "time and opportunity." In other words, it is necessary in a conditional sense only. Wesley drove home this distinction by appealing to the condition of the thief dying on the cross, for whom there simply was no "time and opportunity" to become a part of any religious community, including the religious community that is the visible church of Jesus Christ. But, then, was Jesus' promise to the thief vain? No, Wesley insisted; for all that was necessary in an unconditional sense was the thief's obedient faith, his obedient trust in God and loyalty to God in accepting Jesus' promise. Being part of a religious community – by constantly making use of its distinctive means of salvation through faith and then joining in continually administering these means to others through bearing witness – being part of a religious community in this sense follows necessarily from the obedient faith through which alone anyone is saved solely by God's grace. But the necessity in this case is always conditional only – always provided that there be "time and opportunity" – and it is in this sense, although only in this sense – that I answer Yes to the first part of the question, also.
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Although I happen to have had the opportunity to talk about this question briefly with the person who has submitted it, I must confess I'm still perplexed by it and fearful of missing its point. But, for what use it may be, I'll make three points of my own by way of response, and then leave it to the general discussion to produce a proper answer.
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My answer – again unhesitatingly – is, Yes, it certainly is possible that those who hijack the name "Christian" do more harm than good in communicating the gospel. I'm assuming, naturally, that what is meant in context by "hijacking the name 'Christian'" is claiming explicitly or implicitly that one's own way of being Christian is the only way rightly so named. But you'll have noted, I'm sure, that both my reformulation of the question and my answer to it allow for the possibility – which I trust the questioner, also, would wish to allow for – that "noisy fundamentalists" are by no means the only, even if, perhaps, the noisiest, Christians who make or imply any such exclusivistic claim.
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7. Many "fundamental Christians seek the Kingdom of God as a physical place after death. Many who attend mainline churches also struggle with the concept of what occurs after death and haw our living "now" impacts what happens "then." Can you speak to your understanding of "The Kingdom of God" and its impact on us as a people of faith and/or the emphasis the Christian religion should place on "the afterlife' "?
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8. If you have been taught that intercessory prayer works if you have enough faith, why is it that it seems a magical incantation and not really faith – especially when nothing happens?15
This question raises several important theological issues – from What is the right course to follow when what you've been taught proves to be either patently false or unfalsifiable and therefore meaningless? to What is really faith, as distinct from magic? and, not least, What is the point of intercessory prayer if, on at least some understandings of it, it seems to be quite pointless and/or a matter of practicing magic instead of really living by faith? Obviously, we could spend our entire time this evening on anyone of these issues – to say nothing of the others the question also raises. So I shall respond to it by saying only a few things about just one of them – leaving it to the subsequent discussion to bring out anything else that can and should be said to respond to the question.
The issue to which I shall speak is the third I specifically mentioned: What is the point of intercessonj intercessory prayer? The issue of the point of prayer is probably most commonly raised when persons ask, Does prayer work? and, in the case of intercessoT'j intercessory prayer, Does petitioning God on behalf of others work? The answer the questioner confesses to having been taught – along, I suspect, with many of the rest of us – was, "Yes, intercessory prayer works if you have enough faith and keep on praying." But wherein, exactly does the working of prayer consist? Supposing that, if one has enough faith, one's prayers for others will work, what would be the evidence that, in point of fact, one has had enough faith and that one's intercessory prayers have worked? Would the evidence be that the others for whom one had prayed actually received what one had asked for on their behalf? And is this why, when "nothing happens," as the questioner puts it, it seems that one's incessant intercessory prayers haven't worked and are therefore pointless and/or just a magical incantation?
'If the answer is, Yes, then the underlying theological issue, dearly, is what is the point of intercessory prayer. If it's not effective as, in William James's memorable words, "an effort to lobby in the courts of the Almighty for special favors," then w"hatwhat, exactly, is its point, and why do we continue to engage in it and to enjoin one another (not to mention bringing up our children!) to do so? If intercessoT'j intercessory prayer is not a reliable means of getting what we want, what good is it?
There's an old position on this issue that I take to be – or, at least, to point to – the right theological position; and I want now briefly to develop it by way of
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focusing our discussion. Simply put, the position I'm prepared to defend is that prayer generally, and petitionary and intercessory prayer in particular; are a means of salvation, or, if you will, a means of grace.
The difficulty with this simple formulation, of course, is that there are so many things that have been said to be "means of salvation." If the term is most commonly applied to such things as preaching the word and administering the sacraments, it has also been applied to the faith by which the grace mediated by both word and sacraments alone becomes effective in our lives. But then it is also often applied to the representative ministry of the church and, by further extension, to the visible church itself, which, in the well-known formula of the Roman Catholic Church's Second Vatican Council, is defined as "sacrament of the salvation of the whole world" (sacramentum salutis totius mundi). More than that: in much contemporary theology, the application of the term has been extended still further to include Jesus Christ himself, who IS said to be the primal sacrament, or means of salvation, the church then being distinguished as the primary means, and all other such things as the church's word, sacraments, and ministry being distinguished as secondary means. My own way of making essentially the same point is to say that faith in God through Jesus Christ, although in its own way a means of salvation and therefore not constitutive of salvation, but only representative, of it, nonetheless is the constitutive such means for Christians – which is to say, the means that constitutes anything and everything else as properly Christian – while all other so-called means, be they the primary means of the visible church or the secondary means that the church in turn constitutes, are in no sense constitutive but rather representative means of salvation even for Christians.
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all – but one of many such representative means that we as Christians recognize and use. I say, "as we ordinarily understand it," because, as we all know, the term "prayer" can also be used in extended senses – so extended, indeed, that Paul can exhort the Thessalonians, "Pray constantly," or, as the KJV has it, "Pray without ceasing." In the same vein, the great theologian of the ancient church, Origen, can say that "the whole life of the saint [is] one great unbroken prayer," and Bishop John A.T. Robinson can write in our own time, in Honest to God, "Prayer is the responsibility to meet others with all I have, to be ready to encounter the unconditional in the conditional, to expect to meet God in the way, not to turn aside from the way. All else is exercise towards that or reflection in depth upon it." Clearly, "prayer" is being used in all these cases in so broad a sense that it covers the whole of our Christian existence as an existence in faith working through love and love see!dng seeking justice, and is thus merely another word for our proper worship, or service, of God. But, as we most commonly use the term, "prayer" has the much narrower meaning illustrated paradigmatically by what goes on, or should go on, in the corporate worship of the gathered church. Far from referring to the whole of our existence and activity as Christians, it refers to one activity alongside others, the significance of which – as of all such special "religious" activities (which, of course, are the "all else" of which Bishop Robinson speaks) – is in some way to re-present the ultimate reality understood and responded to in different ways through Christian faith and witness. In that sense, prayer is the re-presentation through appropriate concepts and symbols of the understanding of God, our neighbors, and ourselves to which we are brought insofar as we understand them in the light of God's decisive word to us through Jesus Christ. Prayer in this sense, in other words, is our response or "Amen" to the truth disclosed to us through God's decisive revelation through Christ as mediated through the visible church and all of its other secondary means of salvation. Prayer is our acknowledgment in an outward visible \..yay way of the reality of God, our neighbors, and ourselves as this ultimate threefold reality is decisively re-presented to us through Christ and the church.
Thus our prayers of adoration primarily re-present our understanding of God, while our prayers of confession primarily re-present our understanding of ourselves before God, in face of God's liberating judgment against our sin. On the other hand, our prayers of thanksgiving explicitly express both – both our understanding of God as the primal source and final end of all that we are and have and our understanding of ourselves as the grateful recipients of all God's gifts – while our prayers of petition further re-present our understanding of ourselves, and our prayers of intercession re-present our understanding of our neighbors. In the second of the two evangelical commandments, you'll
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remember, we're charged with loving our neighbors as ourselves. Well, I hold that petitionary prayer, in the usual sense, is one of the ways we go about fulfilling the commandment to love ourselves, even as intercessory prayer which is really only petitionary prayer for others – is one of the ways we go about loving our neighbors. But how so? Why do we pray for ourselves and our neighbors? To what end do we pray? Here is where I always remember one of my favorite theologians, Martin Luther, who was the first to help me answer these questions, although I have since learned that essentially the same teaching is to be found already in Augustine (from whom Luther may very well have learned it) as well as in the sermons of the chief teacher of my own church tradition as a Methodist – John Wesley. In his commentary on the Sermon on the Mount, and specifically on Mt 6:7-13, Luther writes (and I quote him at length):unmigrated-wiki-markup
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"By our praying, therefore, we are instructing ourselves more than we are \ [God\].... \ [P\]raying teaches us to recognize who we are and who God is, and to learn what we need and where we are to look for it and find it." Or, as John Wesley puts it, H\"[T\]he end of your praying is not to inform God, as though he knew not your wants already; but rather to inform yourselves. . . . It is not so much to move God, who is always more ready to give than you to ask, as to move yourselves, that you may be willing and ready to receive the good things he has prepared for you."
In sum: we pray because we are human beings who, as Paul says (Rom 8:26), do not know how to pray as we ought. We pray because in this way, through the means of salvation that prayer is, we may be saved from the unbelief – or, if you will, the unfaith, the lack of obedient trust in God and loyalty to God and to all to whom God is loyal – to which we are continually tempted by our life in this world.
But here I would remind you that the primary emphasis in the classical Protestant doctrine of the priesthood of all believers is not that we are each our own priest before God, but that we are each to be priests of God to and for one another. Therefore, '!\Then when I say – following Luther and Wesley – that we pray to instruct ourselves, I mean also, and primarily: we pray to instruct one anotherwhereinanother – wherein, incidentally, the reason is to be sought for le~.Ining learning how to pray in the church's school of prayer, through her treasury of prayers and her prayer book. In this sense, we pray to bear witness – to re-present to one another and to all the truth decisively disclosed to us through God's word in Jesus, so that, again and again, we can each make tpjs this truth our own through faith. We pray for ourselves
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and our neighbors to bear witness – to re-present to one another the truth about our existence disclosed to us through Jesus Christ. God gives us both ourselves and our neighbors to love in and through God's love, and, in God's decisive word to us through Jesus, God discloses both ourselves and our neighbors in the light of God's all-encompasing love, under its gift and demand. By means of our prayers of petition and intercession, we re-present our reception of God's gift of ourselves and our neighbors, so as to make it really ours, so as to take full responsibility for it, so as also to obey God's demand.
But if prayer is rightly understood, not as an ineffective means of lobbying with God for special favors, but as, in this sense, a means of salvation, how effective a means is it? Otherwise put: Does prayer used as such a means work? Does something happen, after all? I deeply believe it does; for when we learn to pray as we ought, making use of prayer as the means of salvation it properly is, it is bound to be effective for us as the pray-ers, and we have every reason to hope and pray that our prayers may also become an effective witness, and so an effective means of salvation, for others.
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Let us pray. – Bless, O God, all our attempts to do theology and enable them to bear rich fruit. Help us, above all, both to speak and to listen to one another in love: to say what we mean and to mean what we say; and, not least, to hear what is meant, not just what is said; for Jesus's sake. Amen |
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